The Mad Max appearance deserves attention as a separate event from the music, because it demonstrated something specific about Tina Turner’s cultural reach by 1985. She appeared in a major Hollywood blockbuster not as a musician making a cameo but as a dramatic actor in a leading role. Aunty Entity — the character she played — was the film’s central antagonist, the ruler of a post-apocalyptic settlement, a villain of considerable theatrical extravagance. The role required her to wear chain mail, to deliver dialogue, to project physical authority in scenes that had nothing to do with singing.
She could do it. The same physicality and authority that made her a distinctive stage presence made her a distinctive screen presence. The film was commercially successful, and her performance was noticed by critics who otherwise had limited engagement with the music.
The “One of the Living” recording itself — different from the thematic song “We Don’t Need Another Hero,” which was also from the soundtrack — was the kind of high-energy rock-inflected track that demonstrated range. The Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance in 1986, following the Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance in 1985 (for “Better Be Good to Me”), meant that Tina Turner won in the same Grammy category in back-to-back years — a specific competitive consistency that the award record confirms.
The back-to-back wins in the rock vocal category are worth noting because they complicate the occasional claim that the Private Dancer era was Tina Turner having a lucky moment in a genre she didn’t really inhabit. Two Grammy wins in the same rock vocal category, in consecutive years, from two different projects, suggests something more systematic than luck.